PROFILE - Ly May Lai

Five years ago I befriended Ly Mai Lai. I was living in the village at the time and she was the shy girl who never really talked. I later found out that she had stopped going to school younger than the rest of the girls in her village. And, her English was almost nonexistent.

Because of her proximity to where I was staying we had the opportunity to become very good friends. In the fields, collecting wood, and at dinner, I would practise my Dao-ness, and she would be practising her English.

Today, Ly May Lai's English has become so good that she has just become a tour guide for international trekking tourists coming to Sapa. She has learned about tourists and tourism through running one of the most successful homestays in Ta Phin village.

Just after the CIDA funded Capilano University tourism capacity building project, Ly May Lai, learned from other Ta Phin homestay owners, to start her own. Her brother and father built a complementing addition onto their home; following traditional Red Dao architecture. Ly May Lai, met and networked with day-tripping tour guides and invited tourists to her house for lunch. The connections she made became business partnerships and her homestay has seen regular occupancy ever since.

She is however very busy, and especially with her new tour guiding job. This young entrepreneur has begun training her new sister-in-law in hosting guests, cooking and even English. In August (2010) she created a mini-business development plan outlining some short term goals which included: enhancing her menu options for homestay tourists, building a new herbal bath room, and decorating the guests' common area.
We will continue to post updates on May Lai's developments as she continues to excel as a youth leader in her community's tourism.

Context - Setting the Stage

YVR; HKG; HAN is 14 hours.

Visa stamps, baggage collection, and then WHAM - you've just walked into a semi-solid wall of humidity. You can feel the air as you walk through it, the rest of your senses are trying to get used to what you see, smell, and hear.

Nothing can prepare you for the next morning. Those who wake up early will venture out into the busiest of streets.

Motorcycles and more motorcycles. Food vendors, tourists, and excercise groups are drawn to Hoan Kiem Lake. However, you are here on a mission; you have a meeting at 9 am sharp.

Meetings and meet-ups, quick dinners, running arounds and last-minute fix-ups, the excitement builds as we prepare the final touches on modules and gather training materials. Tonight we board the train.

When you arrive in Lao Cai train station there is a flurry of activity before we find ourselves daydreaming on the bus up to Sapa. The highs and lows of Vietnam never cease. Extreme extremes challenge your body, challenge your patience, and inspire you.

And then there is Sapa. The energy is astounding. A hundred years worth of travel stories have been collected and interpreted between a multitude of cross-cultural interactions and histories.

Sapa is the main tourist centre. Sitting at the highest elevation of any populated area, the hotels, shops, restaurants, travel agencies, and government buildings are adorned in French influence. Below this busy hub of activity, and seen from easy-to-find vantage points, are the small hilltribe villages. They dot a terraced landscape that is worked on an annual basis. Subsistence farming is the means to which the Hmong, Dao and Day feed themselves.

These villages are also where tourists will go to take their pictures, do their trekking, stay in authentic cultural homestays, buy their handmade souvenirs, and hopefully learn something.

It is in two of these villages, Ta Phin and Lao Chai, where we will do the same, and then some.

Students from Capilano University get involved - the application process begins!

Beginning the week of November 8, interested students from Capilano University will be putting together application packages expressing their interest in traveling to Viet Nam as part of the next two Canadian trips to work in Ta Phin and Lao Chai (estimated timeline is March and June of 2011 for these trips). After submitting their applications (due Tuesday, November 16), students will be participating in a competitive selection process including both a group assessment on November 19 and individual interviews the following week.A total of four students will be selected to participate (two students on each trip).

We are looking forward to gaining the involvement of several more students at a local level in British Columbia as well, to contribute to a variety of initiatives such as fundraising for the project, helping with lesson planning and preparation of classroom materials, and compiling information to promote the project to external audiences.

Stay tuned for profiles of the students who have been selected to participate!